Lidl - Is it really hell on earth?

Only if you go to the market or can get to it. I used to have to drive to town & then pay to park the car etc. I used to walk or cycle to Lidl or Toom.

Which is entirely normal for Germans to do...the Saturday morning trip into town to shop at the (local) market is as much German tradition as watching 'Tagesschau' news at 8PM on ARD.

I'm half German and lived there for large parts of my life...so I should know

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I totally disagree. Real & Toom ( a larger version of REWE sold lovely expensive fruit & veg that would start to turn mouldy the second it left the shop.

How long did you keep them for? There is a big difference between f&v sold in the UK to that sold in Germany. Less artificial stuff but the bad thing is you need to even keep you bananas in the fridge if you want them to stay fresh.

I wonder what causes attitudes like yours. Snobbery? Ignorance? A combination of the two?

Perhaps it is the poor quality of the products, or the loose business ethics?

Maybe it is the poor way these companies treat their staff?

The stressful shopping experience of these stores?

Personally I would never set foot in one, I don't see the point, I can afford to buy what I want from a decent retailer. I know WHERE my food has come from, I know WHAT is in it, I can expect the staff producing it were treated in a certain way. I know that it will be a stress free shopping experience!

Perhaps it is the poor quality of the products, or the loose business ethics?

Maybe it is the poor way these companies treat their staff?

The stressful shopping experience of these stores?

Personally I would never set foot in one, I don't see the point, I can afford to buy what I want from a decent retailer. I know WHERE my food has come from, I know WHAT is in it, I can expect the staff producing it were treated in a certain way. I know that it will be a stress free shopping experience!

But if you actually did set foot in one you would know that the products are not poor quality.

It is statistically impossible to produce some of their products for the prices they sell them at, let alone make any proffit, therefore they are either crap quality, or I would question strongly how the products were produced (morally/ethically)

Perhaps it is the poor quality of the products, or the loose business ethics?

Maybe it is the poor way these companies treat their staff?

The stressful shopping experience of these stores?

Personally I would never set foot in one, I don't see the point, I can afford to buy what I want from a decent retailer. I know WHERE my food has come from, I know WHAT is in it, I can expect the staff producing it were treated in a certain way. I know that it will be a stress free shopping experience!

That sounds like another little group of prejudices. As others have said, Lidl products are not generally of poor quality.

Stressful shopping experience? Not in the ones I've been in, though as I've said the only Lidl stores I have been in are fairly new and in small towns. The stores have been clean, quiet and not frequented by hordes of chavs or warring gangs, despite what some have said on this thread.

As for the way the company treats its staff, well, possibly there may be grounds for concern there. However, my local store seems to have held onto most of its staff for a few years now, so I wonder just how awful things really are. By the way, they're all local people, not some sort of desperate Eastern European immigrants either. One of the newer assistants moved from the local Morrisons where she'd been for years, though I don't know her reasons for making the move.

It's interesting that you have such strong feelings about the company when it seems that you've never set foot in one of their stores. You're like someone who says that they hate a film when they haven't seen it. I can't be bothered to go back through the thread to check, but it is odd how many FMs say they dislike the place while clearly knowing nothing about it. For example, there are those who don't seem to know that Lidl have bar-code scanners and have used them for years. Many of those who claim to despise the company do seem remarkably ill-informed.

Remember how Skoda used to be a joke in the world of cars and how they managed to turn their image around? Maybe Lidl are now in the "joke" position in the world of retailing and need to perform a similar trick.

It is statistically impossible to produce some of their products for the prices they sell them at, let alone make any proffit, therefore they are either crap quality, or I would question strongly how the products were produced (morally/ethically)

At those prices none of the meat will be free-range, not a hope in hell of organic. What may be labelled as organic is not recognised by the British Soil association.

Lidl have been widely criticised for their treatment of animals and the excessive food miles associated with their products due to the cheap sourcing from questionable sources.
Just take a look on Wikipedia and the Lidl article has plenty of links to wesbites that highlight their dodgy practices.

In reality, looking around their website, apart from the odd bargain none of it is exactly ground breaking pricing, for the cost of a few pence I would prefer to shop with a major supermarket.

Any up to date opinions on here at the mo? I have an assessment centre with them soon for Deputy Manager, and was wondering if I should go to it?

I've been out of work for 4 months and am desperate I've had a few interviews recently, and am waiting to hear back. Lidl really is a last resort. Is there anyone on here who works for them at the moment?

I shop in my local Lidls at least twice a week and have never got a bad product from the shop, I would buy my regular food items and have bought loads of the special weekly offers and none of them have failed me yet. I think people are cofusing the proper prices of food etc with the overpriced identical products that we have been used to buying from the better known supermarket chains, just because the likes of asda and tesco are more expensive does not mean they are better unless you like to be ripped of.

Aha. I got a job at a Lidl as a Summer job is 2002. Hated it! Minimal staff so everything is kind of everyone's responsibility. They usually only have one member of staff on tills, so queues tend to develop very quickly, which made me flustered. When it came to working on the checkouts, the focus was on getting the items through as quickly as possible as opposed to good customer care.

I was led to believe that it was a full time job. However, they had taken someone else on at the same time as me - both of us part time, working a few hours here and there. How they expected people to develop and become more efficient under this arrangement is beyond me. Personally, it wasn't a good time for me anyway, so being a job working with the public was the wrong thing for me.

I shop at Lidl quite often. Some of their stuff I prefer to other supermarkets. I love their Greek Yoghourt, their rye bread and many of their breakfast cereals. I love the gherkins in jars, beetroot and roasted peppers.

I also love it when they have Greek week ..... loads of food items which I eat and recall happy holidays.

My daughter's friend worked at Lidl for a couple of years and she had no complaints about the pay or indeed the work. They pay better than most other supermarkets.

I would also like to say that despite shopping at Lidl for years and years, I have seldom had to return anything. But when I have they've been excellent, no bother at all.

Never worked there but do shop there sometimes. Some of the older stores are a bit grim but the new ones are great. Food is fine, great at xmas with all the German xmas food. Never have many staff on tho, same for Aldi

I like both lidl and aldis, there just a german supermarket, the good they sell are pretty damn good quality, the chocos are very good, better than you get at tescos or asda. and the staff there are always nice, i dont get that artical at all.

I think they're brill - the best round here for fresh fruit & veg, cheese selection is great and they've started to do British back bacon at a reasonable price.

They've just introduced a wonderful in-store bakery in our local store, I use their moisturising cream and it's great, my husband's been renovating our outside table with their sander, I bought the crepe maker last week & it's fantastic! --- what's not to like?

p.s. - their 49c per litre carton of wine still gets me through the week